Best Books of 2015

I usually take time in January to rethink the best books I’d read the year before. I’m late this year, but I thought some readers might still appreciate it.

My fiction readings included a few more Bess Crawford novels by Charles Todd, always clean and entertaining; three Davis Bunn novels, I’d never read him before but enjoyed all of them; a reread of Ted Dekker’s Blink, my favorite of the Dekker books I’ve read; and the Accidental Empress by Alison Pataki, interesting but not near as good as her first book, The Traitor’s wife, which was on my best of the year list for 2014.

I also read two of Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone books. I’d read The Columbus Affair before and decided to try some more of Berry’s action tails. So far they’ve all been enjoyable, but The Lincoln Myth surpassed them all; it was one of best novels of the year. The book proposes a secret agreement between Abraham Lincoln and Brigham Young. A fascinating bit of history. Berry rewrites some history, but unlike a Dan Brown, Berry tell his readers at the end what he discovered in his studies as true and what he invented for fiction sake.

The most fascinating novel, however, may have been Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie. The race to get the Bible printed before anyone found out about the invention and before money and supplies ran out was a fun adventure, especially for this reader who loves the history and stories of the Reformation. I’ve often taught that the printing press was the greatest invention of history, but the politics and business decisions surrounding it are also very intriguing. Sometimes Christie is blunt about the depraved thinking of the characters, but nothing was too explicit or unreal.

The best Christian book by far had to be John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, which I reviewed in this blog. Stott not only explains what the Bible teaches about the cross, he also explains why it has to be that way. The cross is the only possible answer to God’s perfect justice and his unfailing love.